keep him and allow him full play. Like tea and wine tasters, they must not be argued with nor forced into unnatural decisions by the power of numbers. If it be said that a unionist can perform this delicate social duty, let us hear what Mr. Thornton[1] says in this regard:
"They" (trades-unions) "tell us plainly what they aspire to is 'control over the destinies of labor;' that they want not merely to be freed from dictation, but to dictate—to be able to arrange the conditions of employment at their own discretion."
Mr. Applegarth, one of the most accomplished unionists, says:
"The business of the employed is to look after their own interests, leaving employers, customers, and the rest of society, to look after theirs and to shift for themselves as they best may."
Firm associations of employers promote the highest economical ends no better when they antagonize the market, or society economically considered. The notion long prevailed in trade and manufactures, that advantages and profits should be secured through monopolies and arbitrary control of the markets. Modern society has abandoned this theory; has forced employers and sellers into a larger view of their own interests through social obligation; and it will compel labor-organizations toward the same end by irresistible social laws. Mr. Thornton admits this principle in another form, for he constantly says the close organizations of laborers are now compelling absolute combinations of the employers to oppose them, and that these latter must surely prevail. Yet he regards the struggle as necessary, and the only means of bringing order and justice out of clashing class antagonisms. However this may be in England, and it is not our business to inquire, in America the principle does not and cannot prevail. European civilization has left but one citadel to the few, in their opposition to the many. Chieftainship, social prestige, money, all pass away from a class if its individual members are not true to its instincts. One fortress remains, where, intrenched by law, the privilege of classes can hold all assailants at bay, and can repair the unthrifty ravages of reckless individuals. Land, the final reservoir of natural advantage, the sure protector of privilege, is, in Europe, practically beyond the reach of the many. In England, the country of greatest abundance, capital ventures itself commercially not below five to ten per cent., while it rests content in land at two per cent. This petty profit shows contrariwise the immense power and value of land. In our country it is practically free; the Government gives a homestead on the open prairie, or, if that be too distant and uncertain, the laborer, riding one hundred miles by rail from a crowded district in New England, can find cheap, fertile lands, with homestead buildings abandoned and decaying. It is impossible for one class to oppress another long, while these doors open freely outward to the
- ↑ Pp. 193, 194.
